The availability of several techniques and devices for identifying the geographical location of mobile device users has enabled a large variety of commercial and non-commercial services, such as navigation assistance, enhanced social networking, location-aware advertising, and location-aware emergency calls. However, different services may have different positioning accuracy requirements imposed by the application. In addition, some regulatory requirements on the positioning accuracy for basic emergency services exist in some countries, such as the FCC's E-911-related requirements in the United States.
In many environments, the position of a mobile device user can be accurately estimated by using positioning methods based on GPS (Global Positioning System) or other satellite-based system. Nowadays, wireless networks are often able to provide positioning-related assistance to mobile terminals (often referred to as user equipment, or UEs, or wireless terminals, mobile stations, or simply “mobiles”) to improve the terminal's receiver sensitivity and GPS start-up performance. Several of these techniques are known as Assisted-GPS positioning, or A-GPS.
GPS or A-GPS receivers may not be available in all wireless terminals, however. Furthermore, GPS is known to fail in certain indoor environments and in urban “canyons” in the radio shadows caused by tall buildings. Complementary terrestrial positioning methods, such as one approach called Observed Time-Difference-of-Arrival (OTDOA), have therefore been standardized by the 3rd-Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and are deployed in various wireless networks. In addition to OTDOA, the 3GPP standards for the so-called Long-Term Evolution (LTE) wireless system also specify methods, procedures and signalling support for techniques called Enhanced Cell ID (E-CID) and Assisted Global Navigation Satellite System (A-GNSS). Later, a network-based technique called Uplink Time-Difference-of-Arrival (UTDOA) may also be standardized for LTE.
Three key network elements for providing location services (LCS) in an LTE positioning architecture include the LCS Client, the LCS target and the LCS Server. The LCS Server is a physical or logical entity managing positioning for a LCS target device by collecting measurements and other location information, assisting the terminal in measurements when necessary, and estimating the LCS target location. A LCS Client is a software and/or hardware entity that interacts with a LCS Server for the purpose of obtaining location information for one or more LCS targets, i.e., the entities being positioned. LCS Clients may reside in the LCS targets themselves. An LCS Client sends a request to LCS Server to obtain location information, and LCS Server processes and serves the received requests and sends the positioning result and optionally a velocity estimate to the LCS Client. A positioning request can be originated from the terminal or the network.
The actual position calculation can be conducted by a positioning server (e.g., E-SMLC or SLP in LTE), for example, or by a UE. The former approach is known as the UE-assisted positioning mode, whilst the latter is referred to as the UE-based positioning mode.
Two positioning protocols operating via the radio network are used in LTE: the LTE Positioning Protocol (LPP) and the LTE Positioning Protocol Annex (LPPa). The LPP is a point-to-point protocol between a LCS Server and a LCS target device, used in order to position the target device. LPP can be used both in the user and control plane. Furthermore, multiple LPP procedures are allowed in series and/or in parallel, thereby reducing latency. LPPa is a protocol used between an LTE base station (known as an eNodeB, or eNB, in 3GPP terminology) and an LCS Server, and is specified only for control-plane positioning procedures, although it still can assist user-plane positioning by querying eNodeB's for information and eNodeB measurements.
A third protocol, known as the Secure User Plane Location (SUPL) protocol, is used to transport LPP in the user plane. LPP also provides for the conveyance of LPP extension messages inside LPP messages. For instance, Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) LPP extensions are currently being specified (LPPe) to allow, for example, the transport of operator- or manufacturer-specific assistance data or assistance data that cannot be provided with LPP, or to support other position reporting formats or new positioning methods. LPPe may also be embedded into messages for positioning protocols other than LPP.
A high-level architecture, as currently standardized in LTE, is illustrated in FIG. 1, where the LCS target is a mobile terminal 110, and the LCS Server is an Evolved Serving Mobile Location Center (E-SMLC) 150 or a SUPL Location Platform (SLP) 160. In the figure, three control plane positioning protocols with E-SMLC 160 as the terminating point are shown, and the user plane positioning protocol is shown extending across the bottom of the figure.
An SLP may comprise two components, a SUPL Positioning Centre (SPC) and a SUPL Location Centre (SLC), which may reside in different nodes, in some cases. In an example implementation, SPC has a proprietary interface with E-SMLC, and Llp interface with SLC, and the SLC part of SLP communicates with the P-GW (PDN-Gateway) and an External LCS Client.
Additional positioning architecture elements may also be deployed to further enhance performance of specific positioning methods. For instance, deploying radio beacons is a cost-efficient solution which may significantly improve positioning performance indoors and also outdoors by allowing more accurate positioning.
To meet varying demands for different Location-Based Services (LBS), an LTE network will employ a range of complementary positioning methods characterized by different performance in different environments. Depending on where the measurements are conducted and where the final position is calculated, these methods can be UE-based, UE-assisted or network-based, each with own advantages. The following methods are specified in the LTE standard for both the control plane and the user plane:                Cell ID (CID);        UE-assisted and network-based enhanced CID (E-CID), including network-based angle of arrival (AoA);        UE-based and UE-assisted Assisted Global Navigation Satellite System (A-GNSS), including A-GPS; and        UE-assisted Observed Time Difference of Arrival (OTDOA).        
Several other techniques such as hybrid positioning, fingerprinting positioning and adaptive E-CID (AECID) do not require additional standardization and are therefore also possible with LTE. Furthermore, there may also be UE-based versions of the methods above, e.g., UE-based GNSS (e.g., GPS) or UE-based OTDOA, etc. There may also be some alternative positioning methods such as proximity based location. UTDOA may also be standardized in a later LTE release, since it is currently under discussion in 3GPP. More methods, LTE and non-LTE, are supported with LPPe. Similar methods, which may have different names, also exist for radio-access technologies (RATs) other than LTE, such as CDMA, WCDMA or GSM.
The OTDOA positioning method makes use of the measured timing of downlink signals received from multiple base stations (evolved NodeBs, or eNodeBs, in LTE) at the UE. The UE measures the timing of the received signals using assistance data received from the LCS server, and the resulting measurements are used to locate the UE in relation to the neighboring eNodeBs.
With OTDOA, a terminal measures the timing differences for downlink reference signals received from multiple distinct locations. For each measured neighbor cell, the UE measures a Reference Signal Time Difference (RSTD) which is the relative timing difference between a neighbor cell and the reference cell. The UE position estimate is then found as the intersection of hyperbolas corresponding to the measured RSTDs. At least three measurements from geographically dispersed base stations with a good geometry are needed to solve for three unknowns: two geographic coordinates for the terminal and the receiver clock bias. In addition, in order to solve for the mobile's position, precise knowledge of the transmitter locations and transmit timing offset is needed.
To enable positioning in LTE and to facilitate positioning measurements of a proper quality and for a sufficient number of distinct locations, new physical signals dedicated for positioning (positioning reference signals, or PRS) have been introduced and low-interference positioning sub-frames have been specified in 3GPP. Details are specified in 3GPP TS 36.211; as of February 2011, version 10.0.0 of this specification is available from http://www.3gpp.org.
PRS are transmitted from one antenna port of a base station according to a pre-defined pattern. A frequency shift that is a function of the Physical Cell Identity (PCI) can be applied to the specified PRS patterns to generate orthogonal patterns. The mapping of frequency shifts to PCI models an effective frequency reuse of six, which makes it possible to significantly reduce neighbor cell interference on the measured PRS and thus improve positioning measurements. Even though PRS have been specifically designed for positioning measurements and in general are characterized by better signal quality than other reference signals, the standard does not mandate using PRS. Other reference signals, e.g., cell-specific reference signals (CRS) also could be used for positioning measurements, in principle.
PRS are transmitted in pre-defined positioning sub-frames grouped by several consecutive sub-frames (NPRS), i.e., one positioning occasion. Positioning occasions occur periodically with a certain periodicity of N sub-frames, i.e., the time interval between two positioning occasions. The standardized periods N are 160, 320, 640, and 1280 ms, and the number of consecutive sub-frames may be 1, 2, 4, or 6.
Assistance data transmitted by the network to a mobile terminal is intended to assist the wireless device in its positioning measurements. Different sets of assistance data are typically used for different methods. The positioning assistance data is typically sent by the positioning server, although it may be sent via other nodes. For example, assistance data may be sent via LPP to an eNodeB for transmission to the UE. In this case, the transmission of assistance data may be transparent to the eNodeB and the Mobility Management Entity (MME). The assistance data may also be sent by the eNodeB via LPPa to a positioning server for further transfer to the UE. In some cases, the assistance data may be sent on request from a wireless device that needs to perform measurements. In other cases, the assistance data is sent in an unsolicited way.
In LTE, the assistance data may be requested and provided over LPP protocol by including requestAssistanceData and provideAssistanceData elements in the LPP message, respectively. The current LTE standard specifies the following structure for provideAssistanceData, which is illustrated in FIG. 2, where the commonIEsProvideAssistanceData information element (IE) is provided for future extensibility only and is not used so far. The LTE assistance data may thus be provided for A-GNSS and OTDOA. The EPDU-Sequence contains IEs that are defined externally to LPP by other organizations, which currently may only be used for OMA LPP extensions (LPPe). A similar structure exists for requestAssistanceData, as shown in FIG. 3, where the commonIEsRequestAssistanceData may optionally carry the serving cell ID (ECGI).
Since for OTDOA positioning PRS signals from multiple distinct locations need to be measured, the UE receiver may have to deal with PRS that are much weaker than those received from the serving cell. Furthermore, without an approximate knowledge of when the measured signals are expected to arrive in time and what is the exact PRS pattern, the UE must perform signal search within a large window. This can impact the time and accuracy of the measurements as well as the UE complexity. To facilitate UE measurements, the network transmits assistance data to the UE, which includes, among the others, reference cell information, neighbor cell list containing physical cell identifiers (PCIs) of neighbor cells, the number of consecutive downlink sub-frames, PRS transmission bandwidth, frequency, etc.
In OTDOA assistance data, some parameters, such as timing of positioning occasions in a neighbor cell, are specified relative to a reference cell. Furthermore, to identify the timing of the reference cell positioning occasion, the absolute timing of the reference cell has to be known. When the absolute timing of the reference cell is not known but is available for some other cell in the assistance data, the timing of the reference cell can be derived and then used for other cells for which only the relative timing is known.
Accordingly, the absolute timing of at least one cell included in the assistance data needs to be known. More specifically according to 3GPP TS 36.355, v10.0.0, Section 6.5.1.1 it is required that the location server should include at least one cell for which the System Frame Number (SFN) can be obtained by the UE.
One solution is to always include the serving cell in the assistance data, since the UE typically knows the absolute timing for the serving cell.
The UE synchronizes to a cell by performing correlation of the synchronization sequences. After performing cell synchronization, the UE typically acquires the System Frame Number (SFN) of the serving cell by reading the system information sent in the cell. The SFN is transmitted in the master information block (MIB), which in turn is sent over the Physical Broadcast Channel (PBCH). The PBCH is transmitted with a periodicity of 40 milliseconds with a repetition in sub-frame #0 of every frame within 40 milliseconds. In RRC idle mode, before camping on a cell, the UE reads its broadcast channel, which contains the system information. Any change in the system information is indicated to the UE by sending a page. In response the UE again reads the system information. In RRC connected mode, the UE acquires the system information via a UE-specific dedicated channel. Hence, typically, and by default, the UE does not read the system information of the cell. However it is possible for the network to request the UE to acquire and report the system information of the neighbor cell.
The UE generally does not read the system information of neighbor cells, as this increases UE power consumption and requires more complex implementation. The neighbor cell system information is only acquired by the UE upon receiving special request from the serving cell.
An example situation when the serving cell is not in the assistance data is one of the several possible scenarios for which inter-frequency RSTD requirements are specified. (The term “inter-frequency” as used herein refers to measurements performed by the UE either only on frequencies other than the serving cell frequency or on both non-serving frequencies and the serving cell frequency.) In the latter case, the reference cell may be on the serving cell frequency and the neighbor cells may be on the non-serving frequencies. In this scenario, all cells in the OTDOA assistance data, including the reference cell, operate on frequencies that differ from the serving-cell frequency (see, e.g., 3GPP TS 36.133, Section 8.1.2.6.1, Table 8.1.2.6.1-1, Note 1), which means that none of the cells is the serving cell.
According to the solution described earlier, the UE acquires the SFN of the reference cell received in the assistance data if the SFN of the reference cell is not yet known to the UE, such as when the reference cell is not the serving cell. Acquiring the SFN of a cell may be done, for example, by reading the broadcast channel of that cell. Acquiring the SFN of the reference cell may be triggered by receiving the assistance data, given that the SFN of the reference cell is not known to the UE, or the serving cell is not in the assistance data, or there is no other cell in the assistance data for which the SFN is known to the UE.
For E-CID, there are intra-frequency UE Rx-Tx (receive-transmit) accuracy and reporting delay requirements. (“Intra-frequency” measurements are taken on the serving cell frequency.) No inter-frequency requirements are currently defined for UE or eNodeB Rx-Tx measurements.
OTDOA uses RSTD measurements performed by the UE. For UE-assisted OTDOA, i.e., when the UE reports the measurements to the positioning node (e.g., E-SMLC), the following requirements have been defined in 3GPP TS 36.133:                Intra-frequency RSTD accuracy requirements,        Inter-frequency RSTD accuracy requirements,        Intra-frequency RSTD reporting delay requirements for FDD,        Intra-frequency RSTD reporting delay requirements for TDD,        Inter-frequency RSTD reporting delay requirements for FDD-FDD,        Inter-frequency RSTD reporting delay requirements for TDD-FDD,        Inter-frequency RSTD reporting delay requirements for TDD-TDD,        Inter-frequency RSTD reporting delay requirements for FDD-TDD.For each of the inter-frequency requirements, two scenarios are considered:        Scenario1: inter-frequency RSTD measurements are performed over the reference cell and neighbor cells, which belong to the inter-frequency carrier frequency f2;        Scenario 2: inter-frequency RSTD measurements are performed over the reference cell and the neighbor cells, which belong to the serving carrier frequency f1 and the inter-frequency carrier frequency f2, respectively.        
The 3GPP requirements discussed above are generic with respect to the frequency channels and frequency bands. In other words, the requirements are the same for any two different frequencies, independently of their absolute and relative location in the spectrum. This generic approach with regard to the frequency channels and bands has also been used for the specification of other measurement requirements, such as the mobility measurement requirements RSRP and RSRQ in LTE. It should be noted also that the requirements are currently common for inter-frequency. Furthermore, there may also be inter-RAT measurements, e.g., a UE connected to a CDMA may be performing LTE RSTD measurements.
To ensure that the positioning requirements are met, test cases are specified by the standard, against which the UEs are tested. Currently specified positioning test cases assume that the timing information for at least one cell (serving cell) in the assistance data is known to the UE. This means that the UEs in the tests are not required to acquire the timing information of any of the cells. In these tests, the UE is required to report the positioning measurements (i.e., RSTD) within limits, including time limits, specified by the test requirements. Failure to do so shall lead to the failure of the test. Hence, if prior to the start of the actual test the UE under test does not have the timing information of any of the cells to be measured for positioning, then it is quite likely that the UE will fail the tests.
It is mandatory for all UEs to support all intra-RAT measurements (i.e., inter-frequency and intra-band measurements) and meet the associated requirements. However the inter-band and inter-RAT measurements are UE capabilities, which are reported to the network during the call setup. The UE supporting certain inter-RAT measurements should meet the corresponding requirements. For example a UE supporting LTE and WCDMA should support intra-LTE measurements, intra-WCDMA measurements and inter-RAT measurements (i.e., measuring WCDMA when serving cell is LTE and measuring LTE when serving cell is WCDMA). Hence, a network can use any of these capabilities, according to its strategy. These capabilities are highly driven by factors such as market demand, cost, typical network deployment scenarios, frequency allocation, etc.
Inter-frequency measurements may in principle be considered for any positioning method, even though currently not all measurements are specified by the standard as intra- and inter-frequency measurements. The examples of inter-frequency measurements currently specified by the standard are Reference Signal Time Difference (RSTD) used for OTDOA, and RSRP and RSRQ, which may be used, for example, for fingerprinting or E-CID.
The UE performs inter-frequency and inter-RAT measurements in measurement gaps. The measurements may be done for various purposes: mobility, positioning, self organizing network (SON), minimization of drive tests etc. Furthermore, the same gap pattern is used for all types of inter-frequency and inter-RAT measurements. Therefore the radio access network (for LTE, referred to as the Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network, or E-UTRAN) must provide a single measurement gap pattern with constant gap duration for concurrent monitoring (i.e., cell detection and measurements) of all frequency layers and RATs.
In LTE, measurement gaps are configured by the network to enable measurements on the other LTE frequencies and/or other RATs (e.g., UTRA, GSM, CDMA2000, etc). The gap configuration is signaled to the UE over the Radio Resource Control (RRC) protocol, as part of the measurement configuration. A UE that requires measurement gaps for positioning measurements, such as for OTDOA measurements, may send an indication to the network, upon which the network may configure the measurement gaps. Furthermore, the measurement gaps may need to be configured according to a certain rule. For instance, inter-frequency RSTD measurements for OTDOA require that the measurement gaps are configured according to the inter-frequency requirements in 3GPP TS 36.133, Section 8.1.2.6, e.g., not overlapping with PRS occasions of the serving cell and using gap pattern #0.
In general, in LTE inter-RAT measurements are defined similarly to inter-frequency measurements. For example, they may also require configuring measurement gaps like for inter-frequency measurements, but with more measurement restriction. The requirements for inter-RAT measurements may also be relaxed. As a special example, there may be multiple networks using overlapping sets of RATs. The examples of inter-RAT measurements specified currently for LTE are UTRA FDD CPICH RSCP, UTRA FDD carrier RSSI, UTRA FDD CPICH Ec/No, GSM carrier RSSI, and CDMA2000 1×RTT Pilot Strength.
For positioning, assuming that LTE FDD and LTE TDD are treated as different RATs, current standards define inter-RAT requirements only for FDD-TDD and TDD-FDD measurements, and the requirements are different in the two cases. There are no other inter-RAT measurements specified within any separate RAT for the purpose of positioning and which are possible to report to the positioning node (e.g., E-SMLC in LTE).
Inter-band measurement refers to the measurement done by the UE on a target cell on the carrier frequency belonging to the frequency band which is different than that of the serving cell. Both inter-frequency and inter-RAT measurements can be intra-band or inter-band.
The motivation for using inter-band measurements is that most of the UEs today support multiple bands even for the same technology. This is driven by the interest from service providers; a single service provider may own carriers in different bands and would like to make efficient use of carriers by performing load balancing on different carriers. A well known example is that of multi-band GSM terminal with 800/900/1800/1900 bands.
Furthermore a UE may also support multiple technologies, e.g., GSM, UTRA FDD and E-UTRAN FDD. Since all UTRA and E-UTRA bands are common, therefore the multi-RAT UE may support same bands for all the supported RATs.
A multi-carrier system (or interchangeably called a carrier-aggregation system) allows the UE to simultaneously receive and/or transmit data over more than one carrier frequency to enhanced data rate. Each carrier frequency is often referred to as a component carrier or simply a serving cell in the serving sector, more specifically a primary serving cell or secondary serving cell. The multi-carrier concept is used in both HSPA and LTE.
In an intra-RAT multi-carrier system, all component carriers belong to the same RAT. Examples are an LTE FDD multi-carrier system, an LTE TDD multi-carrier system, a UTRAN FDD multi-carrier system, a UTRAN TDD multi-carrier system, and so on.
In an LTE multi-carrier system it is possible to aggregate a different number of component carriers of different bandwidths in the uplink and the downlink. One of the component carriers is called the anchor carrier and the remaining ones are called supplementary carriers. Other terms used in literature for the anchor and supplementary carriers are primary and secondary carriers, respectively. Yet other commonly known terms for the anchor and supplementary carriers are the primary serving cell and secondary serving cell respectively. The primary carrier carries all common and UE-specific control channels. The secondary carrier may contain only necessary signaling information and signals, e.g., those that are UE-specific may be not present in the secondary carrier, since both primary uplink and downlink carriers are typically UE-specific. This means that different UEs in a cell may have different downlink primary carriers. The same is true for the uplink primary carriers. For example, in a multi-carrier system comprising of two downlink (F1_DL, F2_DL) and two uplink carriers (F1_UL, F2_UL), some of the UEs may have F1_DL as the primary carrier and remaining ones may have F2_DL as their primary carrier. The network is able to change the primary carrier of the UE at any time. This is done, for example, to balance the load on different carriers.
The component carriers may be contiguous or non-contiguous, as shown in FIG. 2. Furthermore, in the case of non-contiguous carriers, they may belong to the same frequency band or to different frequency bands. A hybrid carrier aggregation scheme comprising of contiguous and non-contiguous component carriers are also envisaged in LTE.
In inter-RAT multi-carrier system, component carriers may belong to different RATs. For example, in such systems one component carrier may belong to LTE FDD and another one to LTE TDD. In another example, component carriers belong to UTRAN FDD and E-UTRAN FDD. In such systems, one of the RATs may be considered as the main or primary RAT while the remaining ones as the auxiliary RATs.
Multi-band carrier aggregation allows a UE to simultaneously receive and transmit data over carriers belonging to different bands, e.g., bands 900 MHz and 1800 MHz.
Regardless of the number of aggregated bands, there is one primary or so-called anchor carrier in both HSPA and LTE-Advanced. Hence, the UE is required to perform the neighbor cell measurements, e.g., path loss, received signal strength, received signal quality etc., at least over the anchor carrier (or anchor band). Secondly, the carrier may be semi-dynamically changed. Thirdly, for the sake of coverage and load balancing, different UEs are typically assigned anchor carrier belonging to different bands. This means that a UE would typically be performing measurements over different bands, which could also lead to substantial difference in the reported values due to difference in the propagation condition. Despite this difference the measurements should be usable by the network for determining the UE position from the reference radio fingerprints.